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Why do I always find little stupid mistakes in my code shortly after publishing a release? It's almost like code review is beneficial or something.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


⚠️ IMPORTANT FEDIPACT ANNOUNCEMENT!!!⚠️

THREADS HAS CHANGED DOMAINS TO THREADS.COM!!!!!


in a deleted article techcrunch confirmed threads would be moving from threads.net to threads.com

zero clue why it was deleted because threads.net already redirects to threads.com as of right now

sooooo yeah!!! new domain to block. check out fedipact.online/why if you're wondering why

:FediPact:

#fediblock #FediPact #meta #threads

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I have successfully built my first #Emacs package. I want to clean it up a bit before I consider releasing it though. Also, while I can build a simple (single file) package, buildig a multi-file one is still eluding me.

When I try to install it, I get the following (less than helpful) error message:
Wrong type argument: stringp, nil

Is there a way I can get more detail on why this is failing?

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

there’s rarely justification for multifile emacs libs. Emacs doesn’t have namespaces, so there’s bo optimization.
in reply to 🇺🇦 Myke

@🇺🇦 Myke True enough, though I still want to know how to do it.

Plus, for larger projects it's sometimes easier to separate things out for clarity.



So Katy has a #Jinhao10 and today the clicker seems to be jamming. When pressed, it seems to resist extending or retracting the nib. I'm giving it a cleaning right now to make sure there was no debris or anything in there stopping it from working, but I don't know if that'll fix it.

Has anyone experienced this before? Is there a fix?

#FountainPens

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Is the trap door opening/closing properly? It could be wedged somehow. You should be able to poke the nib unit through it manually with the top removed and see if it works as expected.

Also when it's apart you can press the rear of the nib unit up into the tail and press the button and see if it operates normally that way.

Then you at least know which end of the pen is misbehaving.

in reply to Jim P.

@Jim P. It looks like there was some debris caught in the mechanism. A good cleaning seems to have resolved the issue. I'm a little confused as to where it came from though.


mh
Coming down off a panic attack relapse. I'm medicated and laying in bed in the dark. I don't know of this was the right strategy, but I needed to stop the fireworks in my brain, and shutting out as much external stimulus as possible seemed the right thing to do.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

mh

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

mh

As a side note, I'm now pretty much convinced I'm somewhere on the spectrum. This felt a lot like the way I've heard an autistic meltdown to be. Sounds were particularly jarring. Katy was packing up her equipment to send back to her old job and the sound of the packing tape was actually painful.

I can think of a number of other incidents where I've become seemingly irrationally agitated at something that should have been a minor thing, and any form of external stimulus whatsoever only made it worse (which really sucks when people try to "help").

Am I way off base here?

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

mh

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

mh

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uspol: 2A nonsense

Katy likes these YouTube channels where they teach about canning and such. One of the people in one of these videos is wearing a shirt with what looks like an AR-15 that says "defense is not a crime".

What in the cinnamon toast fuck do you need an AR-15 to defend yourself from?

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

uspol: 2A nonsense

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

uspol: 2A nonsense

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Got my hair cut for the first time in probably a year because I have an interview tomorrow for a job I really want to get (and think I have a pretty good shot at).

It looks decent, but has revealed a good deal more grey than I'm accustomed to seeing.



This morning Katy noticed a rash all around my neck. I can only attribute it to the new (to me) shirt I wore yesterday. It's like my body has revolted against wearing a shirt and tie ever again.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

if humans were meant to wear clothes, we would have been born that way.


Nothing quite makes you stand out at a Latin wedding like ordering the vegetarian option.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Remind your kids not to handle any Easter eggs they find outside; if they do, the mother bunny won’t return to the nest and nobody will feed the baby Jesus when the eggs hatch.

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We just filled out the card for my niece's wedding. We took some time to figure out the perfect wording, select the right ink and nib, practice my handwriting so that it was on point, and after all that, I finally came to the realisation that I'm not certain as to whether or not she's old enough to have been taught cursive.


Is there any branch of the provincial or federal government that we haven't had to deal with today?

I suppose it's possible.



My niece is getting married this weekend. I'm having to alter my suit. Thought I was done having to wear those. 🙃

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


“Slopsquatting” in a nutshell:

1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but
2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but
3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So
4. Now the LLM code points to malware.

theregister.com/2025/04/12/ai_…



#Today I was asked for the first time if I'm a senior citizen. I mean, I have some grey in my beard, but I was masked so it wasn't visible.

I feel like I'm a senior citizen. Does that count?



gig economy rant

TIL that Instacart now charges a "membership" to get higher priority on assignment of batches. This does not guarantee you anything, it just allows them to further exploit a workforce they're already working to the bone.

Do they not realize that many (if not most) of the people who are working this job are doing it because they don't really have any other options? And they expect them to pay for the privilege now?

Just when I thought they couldn't possibly get any more predatory, they pull this shit.

Bernie Luckily Does It reshared this.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

gig economy rant
Also, I get the whole "don't bite the hand that feeds you" thing. I might take that more seriously if it was actually feeding me. Mostly it just slaps me in the face.


Does anyone know if anyone's still using #CommonLisp in the Real World™?

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I used Common-Lisp on a few professional production projects; a data transformation system for moving data between two companys' different systems. An event processing engine that applies weird complex rules to GPS tracking locations. A web micro-service or two to support some mobile apps. All of those services, except maybe the first, are still running in production. Plus, of course, a few personal projects here and there.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Nyxt browser is written in common lisp.

I'd say common lisp is alive and well.



For all the fancy climbers and beds and such that we've gotten for the cat, his two favourite places to hang out are a random paper bag and our boot tray.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


One thing I really dislike, is the amount people think hosting data is hard.

People talk about needing dozens of cores or gigs of ram to host a database or a website. They get impressed by projects where someone runs a website from an Apple ][ or a pi0.

We, as free software advocates, need to remind people that the charger for a Macbook Pro is enough to run a website, not the Macbook Pro

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in reply to silverwizard

They landed on the moon with a computer that had less computing horsepower than that charger you mention.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Reasons somebody may have misspelled a word: glitchy phone screen, non-native english speaker, they expected their spellchecker to fix it and it failed, dyslexia, standardised spelling is a fake invention of the printing press industry to sell more moveable type

Reasons somebody my have substituted a homophone (eg their and there): Their dictation software fucked up, their spell checker fucked up, they're a non-native english speaker, they were thinking verbally, standardised spelling is a fake invention of the printing press industry to sell more moveable type.

Reasons somebody may have put in the wrong word: Their spellchecker did a substitution and they didn’t notice, their dictation software fucked up, they speak a different English dialect in which that word was correct, they were editing the sentence and made a mistake.

Syntax errors very rarely indicate unclear thinking. They're just typos. It's the logic errors that fuck everything up. Anybody judging the value of an argument based on syntax is missing the more important picture: the printing press companies have lead us down an evil path, but its not to layt too eskayp

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in reply to Charles ☭ says trans rights

Happens to me all the time, especially when I'm composing a post on a dinky phone screen with on-screen keys that are tiny pixels I must mash with my meaty sausage fingers.

I tend to compose non-linearly, maybe writing the conclusion last, then write the main points above it, and only then do the intro. That's often more than the max 500 chars, so then I go back to shorten sentences, change verb tenses, remove adjectives. If I'm not careful, that can result in weird syntax & spelling



mh
Hooray! Had a bit of anxiety today but no full-blown panic attacks.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


So much of cybersecurity is "We must secure the Orphan Crushing Machine so that unauthorized people do not crush the orphans," and not "Why the fuck are you building an Orphan Crushing Machine in the first place?"
in reply to evacide

Well, there's not too much money outside of the Orphan Crushing sector.


Got a rejection letter form one of the jobs I'd applied for. I have to say, I'm not terribly broken up about this one. I applied because I'm trying not to be overly picky, but I don't see myself as having been happy there long-term.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Dear state and local governments: STOP using Google Drive as your only means to disseminate public information.

Private systems are not public, they are subject to arbitrary access controls with no public oversight or appeals process, and therefore they do NOT meet your responsibility to provide information via public means.

This means you, #Brattleboro and #Vermont. #VTpol

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mh

Anxiety's been bad again lately. I am moderately worried about losing the apartment. Taking steps to try to keep that from happening, but sometimes just trying to engage with the problem brings on a panic attack.

I have medication to help with that now, but it makes it hard to think clearly. I will survive this one way or another, but my life is going to have to change. I don't handle change well.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

mh

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in reply to uoou

mh
@uoou Yeah, I actually agreed to go off ADHD meds because while functioning without them is far more difficult, dealing with this is essentially impossible.
@uoou


This probably won't help me in my current job search, but is it worth learning COBOL? I've heard that there are still a bunch of critical systems out there that use it, and that it's hard to find COBOL devs these days.

Is this still the case? The only downside I can see is that I'd have to program in COBOL.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Having worked adjacent to 4 different mainframes at this point in my career along with their "modernization" efforts. Reading COBOL, not terrible. Writing it, eh, probably not so bad but I've never done, only had to read and comprehend what it does. And there are non-MFs that provide implementation of COBOL so you can learn on your own time.

The devil is going to be understanding IBM systems "junk": CICS, DASD, DCLGEN, TSO, RACF etc

in reply to Bill Fellows

@billinkc
What he said. Mainframe basics are more important than COBOL, I'd say.

I work for a company that's doing "Mainframe Modernization" and as a result we have to understand the old crappy non-modern stuff in order to implement new stuff! (Currently my group isn't reimplementing anything based in Cobol. We do Db2 monitoring stuff.)

rocketsoftware.com
rocket.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/r…

(We have AI hype on the front page but really we're just programming. I guess some departments might be doing AI, but I think we're just scared we'll miss the bandwagon. So don't ignore us just for that.)

in reply to Judy Anderson

@Judy Anderson @Bill Fellows I was poking around with some TOPS-20 stuff on SDF. Is that perhaps a more viable route to persue?
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

@billinkc TOPS 20 is dead. Only SDF hobbyists would still use it. IBM mainframe is not dead, much as people wish it were 🙂
in reply to Judy Anderson

@nosrednayduj OMG super small world. One of the projects I was on dealt with model 204/m204. We ended up building a real time synchronization between m204 and SQL Server via messaging.
It was going to be a very cool way to modernize the client's data storage while they incrementally switched the front ends.

Pity literal debt caught up to them 💥

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

If you have no mainframe experience, the first thing I would do is get some mainframe experience or study the mainframe environment. Include JES2. If you only have one or two other programming languages that you have mastered, then I would go for something else that is in current development use. If it's your fourth or fifth language, get COBOL. It's quicker and easier to pick up a language after you have a few under your belt and the concepts are clear in your mind. Oh, and a mainframe environment is not the only place it comes in handy. I did a little work for a steel company that had Critical applications in micro focus object-oriented COBOL, and they had a huge IT department, but I was the only one local with current cobol experience. You never know when that knowledge might become critical.


Dear job posting,

If you expect me to install spyware so that you can micromanage me while I work, at least have the decency not to expect me to supply the hardware.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Also, it was an expectation that I submit to random drug testing. No, I do not want to lose my job because they found amphetamines in my system (legitimately prescribed for ADHD). I already have to jump through enough hoops to get them in the first place.


Went to pick up a prescription and the guy ahead of me in line was chewing the pharmacist out about the automated system, which admittedly sucks but is certainly a decision made by corporate, not her.

He repeatedly threatened to take his business elsewhere. Were I in her position, the response I'd have wanted to give was "please do".

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I would have said, "It's against company policy for me to say, 'please do'"
in reply to Isaac Kuo

@Isaac Kuo Yeah, it's funny how when people are being obnoxious, they don't seem to realize that that really isn't the threat they think it is.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


In case you are wondering why my public PGP key is expired, it is because I would like to discourage people from sending me PGP-encrypted email. The number of times I have had people send me mail in the clear that they appear to have thought was encrypted is NOT SMALL.

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in reply to evacide

I am not surprised!I deleted my Proton account when the CEO started praising fascists, but they made PGP simple to use. 😿
in reply to trunc8ed

The number of people who have emailed my EFF account from their Proton account thinking that they were sending me an end-to-end encrypted email would surprise you.
This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)
in reply to evacide

I just got a flashback to setting up GnuPG with Eudora in the early 2000s. I used it exactly once. 💀


Sooo... I have a flatpak version of LibreOffice, and for whatever reason (probably sandboxing) the spellchecker can't see the text of my document.

I may or may not have sent off a bunch of resumes that said that I "wrote technical documentaiton" in a previous job.

That's just super.

There's a job I really want a decent shot at. Thank God I caught it before submitting to that one.

Edit: I typo'd my typo. 🙃

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

Back in the 1990s I worked at a very large government facility on an RFP for getting an ISP. The winning bidder had in the footer of every page "Bid for Interenet Service Provider." Nobody but me noticed.

Of course, the Interenet was so new in the 1990s that maybe they thought that's how it's spelled...



Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


I had a bit of a hard time getting into this one, but once it got going it was worth it. That said, I think I'm going to step back from the horror genre for a bit. I'll probably return to it when life settles a bit.

(comment on HEX)

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.



So, apparently I've started sleepwalking, or at least sleep-sitting-at-the-edge-of-the-bed and mumbling when spoken to, so that's fun.


I am in urgent job search mode, so I'm gonna throw this out here and see if anything comes of it.

I am a #Canadian, fluent in both #English and #French. I have experience with several programming languages. My strongest proficiency is with #Haskell and #C. I also have a reasonable grasp of #HTML, #JavaScript, #SQL, #Python, #Lua, #Linux system administration, #bash scripting, #Perl, #AWK, some #Lisp (common, scheme, and emacs), and probably several others I've forgotten to mention.

I am not necessarily looking for something in tech. I just need something stable. I have done everything from software development, to customer support, to factory work, though my current circumstances make in-person work more difficult than remote work. I have been regarded as a hard worker in every job I have ever held.

#GetFediHired

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I am also looking for work or client And want to know collaboartor like you
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I am a freelance Senior Software Engineer with 4+ years of experience in web, mobile, and game development,
I am actively seeking clients, outsourcing opportunities, or partnerships, and I offer a 50/50 revenue-sharing model for any paid work you refer to me.
If you're interested in collaborating, feel free to reach out—let’s build something great together!


It may become necessary for me to shut down this Friendica node. Since this is essentially a single-user instace, I won't necessarily give a lot of notice. If that happens, I'll be migrating to a friend's instance and will announce my new home from my old Fosstodon account: @Jonathan Lamothe


I've been an #Emacs user for like 20 years because there was one thing I needed to do back then that was made easier by elisp, and I just got used to using it. In all that time, I hardly ever tinkered much with the config, save a few minor tweaks it was pretty much stock. I had no strong feelings about Emacs in general, it was just the text editor I'd grown comfortable with.

I've recently been diving into #Lisp and poking around with my Emacs config, and after all these years, I think I'm starting to get the appeal. I am still a proponent of "use the tool that works for you", but I'm personally firmly on team Emacs now.

Julio Jimenez reshared this.

in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I'd been told that there were add-ons that could do things like making vim more Emacs-like, but I never saw the point in spending energy to make some arbitrary tool more like the one I was already using for no particular reason.

Jonathan Lamothe reshared this.


Everyone who confuses correlation and causation ends up dying...

:tinfoilcat:

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in reply to CatSalad🐈🥗 (D.Burch)

Also, there are two types of people in the world: those who divide the world into two types of people... and those who don't.
in reply to CatSalad🐈🥗 (D.Burch)

What about correlating causes and effects? And what about identifying a correlation as the cause of some effect---such as a misunderstanding?


I've been an #Emacs user for probably about two decades. Despite this, I only recently learned that ELPA and MELPA are not the same.

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Welp, it's #FountainPen cleaning and re-inking day. #Today I re-learned why I don't use shimmer inks in my #TWSBI Diamond 580. In fact, I usually reserve them exclusively for dip pens.

Time to meticulously clean out a clogged feed. It didn't even make it a paragraph.

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in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

I've got J. Herbin's 1670 Emerald of Chivor in my TWSBI Diamond 580, and it's working fine. I'm not seeing any shimmer though, as I've got an EF nib on it. It looks REALLY cool inside the pen.


So, I've been taking another run at learning #CommonLisp. The last time I tried, I simply could not wrap my brain around macros. I'm reading the same book again, but this time am a more experienced programmer, and it all just clicked in my head.

I might actually end up enjoying #Lisp after all. I don't know if it'll dethrone #Haskell, but I'm starting to get why people like it.

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Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Karsten Johansson
@hajovonta Sure, but that isn't what was being said. The point was only that one doesn't need to think Lisp is too complicated just because of macros. They are not the right place to start. Hence the bit about not starting with them.

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